Q14 - Franklin: The only clue I have

[juliehuh]

why is E not the right answer? isnt the assumption that franklin has is that Miller is not capable of altering her handwriting on purpose so Franklin can't tell its her.. that Miller can only write in her true form?

[richtailkim]

Hi,

I thought that (E) was wrong because it actually reverses the conditional that is being presupposed by Franklin.

Franklin says that "Ordinarily I would suspect Miller... but the handwriting is not hers. So the joker is apparently someone else."

This conditional that is being presupposed in this line of thought is:
If the handwriting is not Miller's, then Miller is not the joker.
Or, to take its contrapositive:
If Miller is the joker, then the handwriting would be Miller's.

(E) mistakes the above conditional as: If the handwriting is Miller's, then Miller would be the joker.

On another note, the reason why (A) tripped me up was that Franklin keeps speaking of "THE practical joker." Now I had thought that we should generally accept the premises of an argument as being true and to aim at criticizing the line of reasoning. But since Franklin takes as given that there is just one practical joker, I thought that it would be wrong to claim that he must be wrong about that very presupposition.

But I do see why (A) is a good answer. But it just didn't seem to me like that (A) was criticizing the line of reasoning. Rather it was criticizing the truth of a premise. Perhaps I over-thought things?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Your explanation is great! In fact so much so, that I've removed my previous explanation so that there's no confusion for future readers.

Great work!

As to your point about answer choice (A) and whether it's directly attacking a premise. It's not that answer choice (A) contradicts a premise that is taken to be true, such as the fact that "the handwriting is not Miller's." An answer choice that contradicted that claim would be wrong. The correct answer should either question the reasoning, or point out something the argument failed to consider. And in this example, it's simply the latter.

[richtailkim]

It's nice to get something right!

Thank you for your response.

And I believe your explanation of (A) is right. It is attacking a presupposition of the argument, rather than a premise.

- Richard

[susan.chen.1989]

This conditional that is being presupposed in this line of thought is:
If the handwriting is not Miller's, then Miller is not the joker.
Or, to take its contrapositive:
If Miller is the joker, then the handwriting would be Miller's.

hmm I didn't really see it this way....

Imo, Franklin is not saying the following:

If Miller is the joker, then the handwriting would be Miller's.

If this is the correct premise, then there is no flaw in the argument since Franklin's conclusion would follow from the contrapositive of the statement:

If Miller is the joker, then the handwriting would be Miller's.
The handwriting is not Millers
Therefore, Miller is not the joker.

...so there is no flaw in the argument if we take yours to be the correct premise.


This is what I took the premises to be:

If the handwriting is Millers, then Miller is the joker.
The handwriting is not Millers.

Franklin then concludes from these 2 premises that Miller is not the joker. However, this conclusion is incorrect in the sense that the handwriting belonging to Miller is a sufficient but not necessary condition for Miller to be the joker. Therefore, the flaw is that Franklin fails to consider other possibilities that may also lead to the conclusion that Miller is the joker. (A) provides one such option and that's why it's the right answer.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

okay, let's clear this up!

There's a big difference between an assumption and a premise. An assumption by definition is an unstated premise.

So if I inferred from A that B would occur, I would be assuming that A implies B. That's still a flaw! It may not be true that A implies B, correct?

richtailkim wasn't implying that the argument stated as a premise that:

If Miller is the joker, then the handwriting would be Miller's.

If it had stated this, you'd be correct - there wouldn't be a flaw in the argument. And we know that there is. Instead richtailkim was saying that the argument infers from the claim that the handwriting is not Miller's that Miller is not the joker. This relies on the claim above, not as a premise - but as an assumption.

This is what I took the premises to be:

If the handwriting is Millers, then Miller is the joker.
The handwriting is not Millers.

The tricky thing there is that nowhere in the argument does it say, "if the handwriting is Millers, then Miller is the Joker." That would be an assumption, but when we go to find assumptions, we don't find assumptions that would create invalid arguments. Relying on an assumption is itself a serious flaw. So think about what the evidence states: that the handwriting is not Millers. Think about the conclusion: that Miller is not the Joker. And then think about bridging that gap!

Does that answer your question?

[geverett]

This was a really good question. The test writers are always coming up with slight curve balls. This one is so tricky because test takers, and this probably affects those of us that have gone numb from scribbling down conditional logic so many time, have become conditioned to just jotting out conditional logic statements when they find them and just looking for the most common flaws on them - reversals, negations.

However, this answer choice puts the necessary condition in the conclusion of the argument, so like you said Matt - the author infers the necessary condition from a premise that contains the sufficient condition. This is definitely an assumption in and of itself.

Here is one more thing to think about. So flaw questions are taught to be thought of as assumption questions, and of course assumptions are necessary to the argument. Is it really necessary that there be no more then one joker in order for the conclusion of the author to follow? While it seems like it would weaken the authors conclusion I don't know if it would blow it out of the water like the negation of assumptions often does.

Also answer choice B caused me a moment of pause. I guess this is wrong, because it would just potentially cause a weakness in the premise that the handwriting is not Miller's and the key is potentially because they could consider the "degree to which the handwriting should look alike" and come to the conclusion that the handwriting is Miller's, is not Miller's, or is inconclusive to determine either way. However, that would be attaching to much to the stimulus as we should just take the argument core at it's face value which is "The handwriting is not Miller's so therefore the joker was not Miller" and find a strong flaw in that argument rather then trying to insert a nebulous answer choice like B that leaves too much wiggle room on whether or not it would change anything at all in the argument. Thoughts?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

While we do teach Flaw questions as representing an assumption, i've never tried using the negation test here and I think the reason is that the assumptions pointed out in Flaw questions frequently represent a sufficient assumption rather than just always a necessary assumption - and of course, we can't use the Negation Test on Sufficiet Assumption questions.

Also answer choice B caused me a moment of pause. I guess this is wrong, because it would just potentially cause a weakness in the premise that the handwriting is not Miller's and the key is potentially because they could consider the "degree to which the handwriting should look alike" and come to the conclusion that the handwriting is Miller's, is not Miller's, or is inconclusive to determine either way. However, that would be attaching to much to the stimulus as we should just take the argument core at it's face value which is "The handwriting is not Miller's so therefore the joker was not Miller" and find a strong flaw in that argument rather then trying to insert a nebulous answer choice like B that leaves too much wiggle room on whether or not it would change anything at all in the argument. Thoughts?

Exactly right. Had the argument discussed how similar the handwritings looked rarher than whether or not it the handwriting was in fact Miller's, then answer choice (B) might have some room to do some damage.

Good work!

[goriano]

As to your point about answer choice (A) and whether it's directly attacking a premise. It's not that answer choice (A) contradicts a premise that is taken to be true, such as the fact that "the handwriting is not Miller's." An answer choice that contradicted that claim would be wrong. The correct answer should either question the reasoning, or point out something the argument failed to consider. And in this example, it's simply the latter.

I'm still having a bit of trouble understanding why (A) doesn't contradict the premises. Note: words that are italicized and in red represent "assumptions of the premises" (see below)

According to the stimulus:
P1: Franklin has only one clue as to the identity of the practical joker. There is only one practical joker.
P2: The handwriting is not Miller's. Miller's assessment of the handwriting sample (e.g. the degree to which handwriting samples should look alike in order to be considered the same source) is accurate.
C: The joker is not Miller.

Your comment for (A) is that it isn't contradicting P1, rather, noting that Franklin had failed to consider there may be more than one joker. But P1 explicitly states THE identity of THE practical joker! So based on your reasoning for (A), couldn't I make a case for (B) as well, saying that Franklin had failed to consider that what HE thinks may not be Miller's handwriting might actually be Miller's handwriting? It seems like within each premise there may be a slew of assumptions embedded in it "assumptions of the premises." And if we are to take all premises at face value, then we shouldn't be questioning the "assumptions of the premises" either?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Generally, we don't think of premises as containing assumptions. Instead, we think of arguments as containing assumptions. Premises are just information, and we simply take them as given. It's the conclusion that is reached from those premises that sometimes rest on assumptions (or flaws/gaps) in arguments.

We can't say that premise 1 assumes there is only one practical joker. I agree that it says "the" practical joker, but I would contend that the first premise simply limits our means of identifying the practical joker to just the handwriting sample, not limiting the practical joker to just one individual.

Answer choice (B) cannot be said to represent a flaw in the argument since nowhere does it say that the handwriting is not similar, therefore the handwriting does not belong to Miller. We want to address the flaw in reaching the conclusion, not in drawing a premise. The conclusion is that the joker is apparently someone else (ie: Miller is not the joker). But miller could be the joker if Miller worked in conjunction with someone else. So answer choice (A) points out a flaw in drawing the conclusion, whereas, the best we could say is that answer choice (B) represents a flaw in drawing a premise.

Remember on Flaw questions, we're not looking to question the premises, we're looking to question whether the conclusion follows from the premises.

Hope that helps!

[sweetygurl]

Can anyone please explain why D is not the right answer?

I had A, E, and D as the contenders - but eventually knocked E out not because of its conditional error, but because Franklin is saying that Miller is in fact not the culprit, where as the choice E is saying the opposite.

Is D wrong because we are only concerned about a single piece of evidence (handwriting), thus there is no need to explain why there is only one in the first place?

Also can anyone explain what is meant by the term "practical joker"?

[griffin.811]

D is wrong because we are looking for a flaw in the reasoning of the ARGUMENT.

The argument is Handwriting not Miller's ---> Miller can't be the practical joker.

When we have flaw questions, I like to think in terms of what did the author fail to consider.

In this case if there were 2 practical jokers, the other culprit may have written the letter, although Miller still participated in the act. So Miller, while not having written the letter, may still be the practical joker, well one of them anyway.

D does not address any flaw, it is outside the scope of the core in my opinion. Even if it were within the scope, D is not a flaw. In this case, We have no reason to justify why we only have one piece of evidence.

Practical joker is someone who plays joke/pranks on others. Maybe you show up to work one day and you mouse or keyboard is missing. That could be a practical joke.

[raziel]

This question is a good example of why we should have an answer ready before looking at the answer choices. Summarizing the argument:

1: The handwriting is not Miller's
C: Miller was not the joker

The conclusion is wrong because it does not follow from the fact that the handwriting is not Miller's that Miller was not the joker.

(A) If fails to... From this answer choice type we know that whatever follows, if it is the right answer, will show that the conclusion does not follow. If there was more than one joker, then the conclusion does not follow and Miller can be the joker! So we can't conclude that he was not the joker.

(E) When we first look at this answer choice, it may look tempting. But we know for a fact that answer choice A points out a flaw in the argument. So we are better off just circling (A). I think this is the point where we all go back to our LSAT lessons and remember that premises should be taken for granted and A seems to be attacking the premises. But on close inspection, (A) is not attacking the evidence used in the argument to reach the conclusion. On further analysis, as others have pointed out, it is actually reversing the assumption made in the argument (Handwriting not Miller's, Miller not joker)

[imsonari]

Isn't answer choice E incorrect because we can't say the joker would have been ascertained to be Miller? It says in the third line that the author "suspects"? Is this incorrect?

[edjhan]

Hey guys, I got this question wrong when I did this section timed (I had picked E) but got it right after doing a blind review and wanted to run my reasoning by you guys.

A) Correct. In my blind review, I prephrased that maybe someone else had written the note but Miller was still in on the joke. Thus, there could be more than one joker. This answer matches my prephrase nicely.
B) I eliminated this because I thought this was irrelevant; we're already told that it's not her handwriting so why would we need to know the degree to which handwriting samples should look alike?
C) Wrong. Frank does provide explanation for this: because she's always been jealous of him
D) Out of scope. Who cares about why only one piece of evidence was obtained?
E) When I was doing it timed, my original prephrase was that Miller could've still been the joker even if the handwriting wasn't hers (maybe she changed it up or wrote with her less dominant hand) and that's probably why I ended up picking E. During the blind review, I diagrammed out the conditional language of this answer and got this:

Miller's handwriting on the note -> Miller = the joker

But Franklin states that it's not Miller's handwriting on the note and thus, she's not the joker. That would be the inverse of the conditional statement that I diagrammed above. Therefore, he's not taking answer E) for granted.

How was my reasoning overall for each answer? Did I make any mistakes or miss any important points for consideration?

[roflcoptersoisoi]

Can someone explain to me how (A) doesn't contradict the first premise?